David Haskell tried to promote freedom of expression at Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University by working from the inside, with little to show for it.

Now the journalism professor wants to promote campus freedom of expression from the outside, as a member of Parliament.

Haskell is running for office as a candidate of the People’s Party of Canada, formed less than a year ago by a disgruntled ex-Conservative Party member.

The professor’s campaign website says he “stands on a platform of individual freedom, personal responsibility, fairness and respect.” He’s seeking to represent the Cambridge-North Dumfries region of Ontario, where he and his family have lived for nearly 20 years.

Haskell first gained media attention in 2017 after defending a graduate teaching assistant, Lindsay Shepherd. WLU investigated her for exposing her undergraduates to a debate on gender-neutral pronouns involving the controversial University of Toronto psychologist Jordan Peterson.

After it exonerated and apologized to Shepherd, WLU appointed Haskell to a newly created Task Force on Freedom of Expression. He quit in disgust, claiming the university’s steep new security fees were targeting right-leaning campus speech.

“My whole decision for getting into politics was I can see that we have lost our universities,” Haskell told The College Fix in a phone interview last week.

“Our universities no longer cherish the idea of searching for truth,” but rather cling to “an established orthodoxy to which you must align or you will be censored or excluded,” he said. Concluding that his public advocacy in the media has had little impact, Haskell determined that “the last vestige of hope was to go into government.”